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Pushsquare, "PlayStation Needs to Take a Long, Hard Look at Itself"

FoxMcChief

Gold Member
Playstation looking at itself.
KMzOPkg.gif
Truth Reaction GIF by MOODMAN
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
According to another guy on this forum, Sony only spent about $38 on Concord, and they have 800 other GAAS games in development, and they expect 797 of them to fail, so it's no big deal. After all, huge AAA first party multiplayer games come out and get shut down a few weeks later all the time, right?

Anyway, I've been saying it for a while, Hulst is not up to this job, and his tenure will not be remembered fondly.
 
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Unknown?

Member
Days Gone is a full singleplayer title. And Guerrilla developed Killzone Sahdow Fall (a game with single player and multiplayer), plus Horizon 1 and 2, being the last two full singleplayer titles.

Now are both developing GAAS titles in a context where games are developing in 5+ years.

I still don't know why Days Gone 2 don't get greenlight, the game sell very well, I doubt a new GAAS IP will perform better.
They are both still developing single player games too.
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
Yeah, Sony clearly don’t have GaaS expertise so they’re gonna go through growing pains with it.

Everything looks obvious with hindsight being 20/20

I mean yeah... but like come on, this wasn't the normal amount of people saying "this game will fail DO NOT LAUNCH"

Like as soon as the reaction from that reveal was registered they should have been working overtime to get an open beta out at that point and gage interest immediately, once it was gaged it should have been pulled. The fact it got to launch at all speaks of Sonys hubris, this was unlike anything iv ever seen other than maybe Valves Artifact.
 
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kaizenkko

Member
They are both still developing single player games too.
Guerrilla, maybe, but they will lose a good amount of time in their GAAS project. And imagine if it ends up being cancelled like Factions.

But Bend is a much small team, I don't think they are developing two titles simultaneously.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
In the last gen Guerrilla Games and Bend Studios developed single-player games, but now the both are developing live service games.

GaaS maybe, but I'd be surprised if they were specifically multiplayer focussed like Concord, Fairgame$, and Marathon.

Something like No Man's Sky is a GaaS but in an entirely different category, as is something like Diablo. Long-tail monetization is a separate issue to going all-in on multi-player focus.

Point being most of Sony's single-player games have offered either paid or free expansions after launch, going GaaS only means adding more of that post launch content, typically at a more regular cadence.
 
More Japan, less western. Simple.
Low T take that would be the absolute end of Playstation in the family room.

Audiences have decades long regional understandings of what a man and a woman should aspire to and anime tits in frilly dresses isn't it.
 
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BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
Low T take that would be the end of Playstation in the family rooms.

Audiences have decades long regional understandings of what a man and a woman should aspire to and anime tits in frilly dresses isn't it.

Meanwhile, Switch is about to become the best selling console of all time nearly 100% off JP developed games
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
Low T take that would be the end of Playstation in the family rooms.

Audiences have decades long regional understandings of what a man and a woman should aspire to and anime tits in frilly dresses isn't it.
It's not 2011 anymore, Japanese games are in a renaissance.
 
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They burned about USD$100m on Concord, burned good will with their players, will likely axe the studio, and funded this trash instead of projects people actually wanted. Eight years of resources for worse-than-nothing. That's not "no harm, no foul". Not at this scale.
Agree and I'm hearing whispers of a quarter B after marketing, brand deals and acquisition costs. Failure this big is enough to get non gamers involved. If we get any more executive eyeballs attached to this, stock tumbles.

Everyone reading this will be a Steam gamer with an Nvidia chip on a Microsoft OS competing with an evil Amazon PS6.
 

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
Do you feel Sony is on the same page or level as Nintendo? Same playing field?

No. Nintendo first party and their IP are in a league of it’s own. But Sony first party used to offer way more variety. Now instead of getting cinematic big budget 3rd person action games and things like Gravity Rush and Tokyo Jungle, we get the former (which are pretty played out IMO) and fuckin Concord/Fairgame$.

Hopefully the lesson they learned from Concord and the ND clusterfuck is that they need to stop listening to blue haired San Franciscans and pay attention to what the people who actually buy games want. Their new CEO seems like a no nonsense kinda guy, I bet there will be a dramatic shift but it won’t bear fruit for like a decade.
 

Killjoy-NL

Member
Ngl it's hard to argue with the article.

Sony will easily recover from this, though. People act like it's the end of the world. Lol
 
I don't think Concord is going to completely change their bottom line. I don't think Astrobot is going to do jack shit for it either. I think the royalties they get from their marketplace will keep them afloat for the foreseeable future until their audience dips. The releases of Wukong and Helldivers 2 probably covered their asses for the duration of the year.
 
...the strategy of “let’s throw 10 gaas at a wall and see what sticks” wouldn’t even pass a whisper...
Yet they can't even be bothered to spend a small portion of this gaas money and make some actual AA or AAA VR games, or even port their PSVR1 games to PSVR 2. Heck they could contract out Flat2VR Studios and have them port The Killzone and Resistance series games to VR. Guarantee you they make more money on this than they do on most of their gaas games.
 

Angelcurio

Member
Fans have been clamoring for years for a remaster of Bloodborne with a PC port, one of the most popular titles in the PS4 era, and yet it has fallen on the deaf ears of Sony execs. On the other hand, The Last of Us gets both a remaster and a remake, and even Until Dawn also gets a remake. And thats without mentioning gems like Concord and Fairgame$ been greenlit. Hermen Hulst at the front of WWS and now of SIE has been horrible.
 
Hopefully this major Bomba is enough to make Sony reconsider these farty GaaS investments going forward. We want our SP games back.
 
So I'm a Nintendo+ player. Nintendo system+Another box. I am getting ready to bail on Xbox, which has turned into a dumpster fire, and now it seems some asshat threw a flaming squirrel into Sonys headquarters.

Do I just sit back, wait to see if Switch2 can run Call of Duty?
You have all multiplatform games running better on PS5 than whatever Switch 2 is, you still got all PS5 timed exclusives or exclusives from other studios. Just because Concord flopped doesn't mean all the other games suck. Astrobot is literally around the corner.
 

ShaiKhulud1989

Gold Member
Sony will retool some things internally and be perfectly fine, especially when GTA VI 20% will offset all the negative spending.

But this drama is getting tough to escalate, ngl.
 

wolffy66

Member
It all boils down to.. games are crazy expensive to make now. Make a giantantic game that's super expensive and makes a fortune, make gaas that lasts, or get shutdown/fired. Where gonna see more concords and redfalls.
 

Nydius

Member
The only thing Sony needs to take a good hard look at is their VR aspirations. This is the second VR headset they’ve launched and then left languishing in no man’s land. Either they’re all in or they’re not. Pick one.
 

Bombolone

Gold Member
Yet they can't even be bothered to spend a small portion of this gaas money and make some actual AA or AAA VR games, or even port their PSVR1 games to PSVR 2. Heck they could contract out Flat2VR Studios and have them port The Killzone and Resistance series games to VR. Guarantee you they make more money on this than they do on most of their gaas games.
At this point in the game, Sony and other publishers/studios would do well to have a division dedicated to ‘Legacy’
A team responsible for curating, creating and keeping tabs on the legacy IPs that built the brand. Is there hunger for a killzone or socom? Ask the legacy team. They go to the suits with proposals. Show where there is interest in the community, bring a proposal on the prospects of bringing a legacy IP back etc.

I understand the market has grown and there is a lot of opportunity to expand into new demographics (maybe) but I agree, they are leaving a bunch of money on the table chasing things that might not even be there.
It seems that Sony knows about their legacy catalog, but maybe nobody is there to give it the love and attention it deserves.
 

simpatico

Member
Push Square is an idiot then. A project that started "8 years ago" and a studio that was bought more than a year ago but the person to blame and lose their job is somebody who was in charge for less than 3 months?
When you’re thrust into an executive position like that, shouldn’t a big part of your job early on be cleaning up the mess from the previous guy? Seems like his eye wasn’t any better. Instead of scrutinizing the upcoming releases he took on Lego Horizon as a pet project.
 
A bit hyperbolic. If they learned their lesson from Concord, no harm no foul. If not, they should look at new management.
Saying that the failure of a game to the extent of 200 million spent on the studio acquisition/marketing, etc., 8 years in development, 12 days live on the market and only 25,000 copies sold is "a bit hyperbolic" is absolutely insane.

This is the worse thing I've ever seen. This is worse than Cyberpunk. At least there was a full game there, albeit extremely broken at launch, but it was playable and they sold millions of copies.

This game? No one ever asked for it and no one was excited for it anyway once it got closer to launch. No one is asking for Marathon, no on is asking for Fair Games. GAAS are abysmal and need to fail. Having one, MAYBE two live service games in your repertoire while the rest are single player would be more than fine. Not 4-5 that all have the same neon colored, soulless characters and uninspired maps.

I consider myself a massive PlayStation fanboy. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm one of the biggest ones on this site, though it's within reason. If Xbox makes sick games like Senua's Saga (it was just alright but still pretty cool), Indiana Jones, the Gears Reboot, Halo (if they would ever make something really sick again), Perfect Dark, I will play them. But all of these newer Xbox games have been produced in response to Sony and Playstation's massive success with single player games over the past two generations. PS doesn't seen to chase trends, they should always innovate of course but do it while maintaining what your base wants!

That being said, as a PS fanboy I am literally over the moon that this crashed like an atomic missile. I will ecstatically dance on the ashes of Firewalk.

After reading the quotes from Herman Hulst in this article, I hope they either force him to pivot back to expanding and developing single player IP's or fire him.

There is no room for this shit on my Playstation.
 
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Three

Member
When you’re thrust into an executive position like that, shouldn’t a big part of your job early on be cleaning up the mess from the previous guy? Seems like his eye wasn’t any better. Instead of scrutinizing the upcoming releases he took on Lego Horizon as a pet project.
By cancelling a near completed game just 3 months from release 8 years in the making? you've spent the money on that asset already. He gave it a fair chance, shut it down when it failed and refunded everybody for the inconvenience. He's alright by my books.
 
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kevm3

Member
The problem is Sony is ran by suits and instead of just making awesome games, they are chasing the profit cows aka all of these games as a service. The reality is only a few games as a service can be successful at a time. If people are playing the same game for months, then they aren't able to play other games vs a single game experience where they play for 20 hours, beat it and move on. Only a very few games as a service will be successful and the others will be desolate, so turning everything into some kind of free to play type game is a futile endeavor.
 

simpatico

Member
By cancelling a near completed game just 3 months from release 8 years in the making? you've spent the money on that asset already. He gave it a fair chance, shut it down when it failed and refunded everybody for the inconvenience. He's alright by my books.
You realize they didn’t even recoup half of the launch marketing budget right? Do those millions not count for anything? Sure in the 00s when we all had free money because of interest rates some companies operated like that, but that era is long gone. Canning it before launch would have saved the company millions of dollars as well as irreparable reputation damage and company embarrassment.

Can’t believe people are defending launching Concord. If $ony has a brain they will discontinue work on Fairgames$ effective immediately. No chance it turns a profit. Just stop the bleeding. Financial and reputational.
 
It's crazy to even suggest that Jim and Herman weren't on the same page.

All his awful decisions in the last years need to be reversed.
 

Unknown?

Member
Saying that the failure of a game to the extent of 200 million spent on the studio acquisition/marketing, etc., 8 years in development, 12 days live on the market and only 25,000 copies sold is "a bit hyperbolic" is absolutely insane.

This is the worse thing I've ever seen. This is worse than Cyberpunk. At least there was a full game there, albeit extremely broken at launch, but it was playable and they sold millions of copies.

This game? No one ever asked for it and no one was excited for it anyway once it got closer to launch. No one is asking for Marathon, no on is asking for Fair Games. GAAS are abysmal and need to fail. Having one, MAYBE two live service games in your repertoire while the rest are single player would be more than fine. Not 4-5 that all have the same neon colored, soulless characters and uninspired maps.

I consider myself a massive PlayStation fanboy. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm one of the biggest ones on this site, though it's within reason. If Xbox makes sick games like Senua's Saga (it was just alright but still pretty cool), Indiana Jones, the Gears Reboot, Halo (if they would ever make something really sick again), Perfect Dark, I will play them. But all of these newer Xbox games have been produced in response to Sony and Playstation's massive success with single player games over the past two generations. PS doesn't seen to chase trends, they should always innovate of course but do it while maintaining what your base wants!

That being said, as a PS fanboy I am literally over the moon that this crashed like an atomic missile. I will ecstatically dance on the ashes of Firewalk.

After reading the quotes for Herman Hulst in this article, I hope they either force him to pivot back to expanding and developing single player IP's or fire him.

There is no room for this shit on my Playstation.
I was talking about the other aspect of it, not financial. That absolutely is a huge blunder. So is allowing this to be released in this state, but acting like it's a path they are headed or that this will continue is asinine. Just clickbait if you ask me.

The game is dead and if they learned from it, I will be happy. If they didn't, well they got a world of hurt on the next release.
 
That's what I say. Why does every game have to be some massive tent pole production? Make some small games and see what catches on, and then release bigger sequels if they want. It's all so dumb. We got a taste with Humanity but they should be doing stuff like that with platformers, racers, etc. Anything really. The budgets could be small, it would generate interest and goodwill with players. Hell, Sony could even outright tell players that these games are being made to test out new IPs or reboots. That's what cartoon network did back in the day with Johnny Bravo, Dexter's Lab, etc. Those were one offs for a show that basically tested new cartoons and they capitalized on the cartoons that their audience enjoyed the most. We really could run SIE better than the current leadership at Sony.
Because they are too big for those game. Because SIE needs to invest billions in gaming, they can't be investing in games that cost $5-$10 million to make because then they'd have to invest in hundreds of projects to spend the billions they have allocated for gaming. First of all there aren't hundreds of good projects available, and their CEO isn't going to be able to sift through the thousands of proposals to pick those hundreds. No, what they will do is do several games that each cost over $100 million.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
Saying that the failure of a game to the extent of 200 million spent on the studio acquisition/marketing, etc., 8 years in development, 12 days live on the market and only 25,000 copies sold is "a bit hyperbolic" is absolutely insane.

This is the worse thing I've ever seen. This is worse than Cyberpunk. At least there was a full game there, albeit extremely broken at launch, but it was playable and they sold millions of copies.

This game? No one ever asked for it and no one was excited for it anyway once it got closer to launch. No one is asking for Marathon, no on is asking for Fair Games. GAAS are abysmal and need to fail. Having one, MAYBE two live service games in your repertoire while the rest are single player would be more than fine. Not 4-5 that all have the same neon colored, soulless characters and uninspired maps.

I consider myself a massive PlayStation fanboy. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm one of the biggest ones on this site, though it's within reason. If Xbox makes sick games like Senua's Saga (it was just alright but still pretty cool), Indiana Jones, the Gears Reboot, Halo (if they would ever make something really sick again), Perfect Dark, I will play them. But all of these newer Xbox games have been produced in response to Sony and Playstation's massive success with single player games over the past two generations. PS doesn't seen to chase trends, they should always innovate of course but do it while maintaining what your base wants!

That being said, as a PS fanboy I am literally over the moon that this crashed like an atomic missile. I will ecstatically dance on the ashes of Firewalk.

After reading the quotes for Herman Hulst in this article, I hope they either force him to pivot back to expanding and developing single player IP's or fire him.

There is no room for this shit on my Playstation.
Yea. If you look at it big picture, Sony just spent hundreds of millions of dollars making a multiplayer game nobody wanted. Talk about misreading the market. It's such a a huge, fundamental mistake that even the most stupid braindead companies that everyone laughs at here will avoid it. More people wanted to play Skull & Bones than this. All the different things that went into this game hitting shelves needs to be looked at and people do need to be fired, because, while they may not fail at the level of Concord again, it shows the people there do not understand what they are doing here.
 
Hopefully this major Bomba is enough to make Sony reconsider these farty GaaS investments going forward. We want our SP games back.
Not before they get rid of Hulst.
I hate that this gen Sony for most part went fully western with majority of first party games.

If it wasn’t for ASOBI team and 3rd party games, I had no reason to keep my PS5.
You have no reason to keep your PS5. They are going to port Astrobot to PC in order to make a few more millions (with no regards to damaging Playstation IP or pushing their customers into PC arms).
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
You have no reason to keep your PS5. They are going to port Astrobot to PC in order to make a few more millions (with no regards to damaging Playstation IP or pushing their customers into PC arms).
PC still doesn’t some of the third party titles like Vanillaware games and some of them takes long time to get ported to PC like FFVII Rebirth.
 
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